Category Archives: Accounting, Business & Finance
This is a place for the professional-related stuff I do from time to time. A lot more can be found on http://www.quoracy.com
Marzena Richter on TV Biznes
Original YT playout date: 31 December 2008
Duration: 10:19
This young lady is, in effect, a competitor of mine, but also an old friend. We studied accountancy at the same college in London nearly two decades ago, and she has founded a successful practice and well deserved her good reputation on the market. What she says here about the practice of accountancy on TV Biznes in Poland makes me proud as a chartered accountant, as an Englishman, and as her friend. I hope all the best for her and her firm and to all my professional colleagues out there. I hope we are all still here at the end of 2009 however tough it is.
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Komunikat po polsku o sytuacji z kredytami na rynku
Original YT playout date: 3 December 2008
Duration: 3:40
This is one of the rare occasions I vlog in Polish.
It is a little known fact that about 30% of the short term bank loans in existence to business in this country, (which is the lifeline of a far greater proportion of businesses than in the west, where many would be granted longer term finance) is going to come to its repayment date in the next 3 to 8 weeks.
On the one hand money has become scarcer and dearer, on the other hand, banks have to lend to somebody. Planning refinancing a little in advance and doing a little brushing up your business plan and case for finance can help matters, as can a look across the market.
This vlog is basically a warning to firms not to leave renewing their short term loans to the last minute. Those who do will find that many cannot get refinanced this year either at all, or on much worse conditions – even Firms who have been used to getting the same or better conditions year after year.
Chats between Guv and Peeps #1. Leaving the EU.
Guv: Hey, Peeps, shall we remain in the European Union or shall we leave?
Peeps: Well, you know what, Guv, in view of what Merkel is doing and how Obama threatened us with the end of the queue for trade deals, I suppose, marginally, we’d better go, hadn’t we? I am sure we’ll find a way to be independent.
Guv: OK, that’s what we’ll do, then.
Peeps: OK, Good luck. Sie schaffen das, hur hur hur.
Two and a half years later:
Guv: Well, Peeps, it’s now nearly three years later, Obama is long gone, Merkel’s on her way out, there’s lots of countries in the EU that would be our allies these days for a less federalist Europe. The guy in charge of the USA is all infavour of our leaving now, but for his own benefit. It’s clear that the whole business of leaving has a lot more issues than we knew about before, and you’ve got 5% more young people who wanted to stay in the electorate now, so are you QUITE SURE you still want to leave?
Peeps: How dare you ask us again? We gave you a clear signal? Wanna go undermining our demotrachic rights?! Disgusting!!!!
Huliganov rants on money launderer
Playout date: 8 February 2007
Duration: 11:28
Views at the time added to HTV: 3,136
Likes at the time added to HTV: 20
Dislikes at time added to HTV: 1
Popularity % ” ” ” =L/(L+D): 95.2%
Comments at time added: 6
Total interactions at time added: 27
Camera: Logitech Webcam
Post Production: Windows Movie Maker – slight use
Location: Office at Jazdow
Other people featured: None
Genre: Hulirant
Music used: Jimmy Ruffin “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?” chipmunk style
Languages used: English
Animals/plants featured: Clown loaches, Ameca splendens
Other remarks:
Huli blows the gaff on an attempt to involve him in a big seven million dollar money laundering venture involving Cote d’Ivoire.
After the rant comes a joke and a song, and a view out of the office window, as well as the true origin of the word “Internet” a borrowing from Russian.
Quote of the clip: “Little ranting, little singing, little joking: zat’s vot it’s all about.”
What’s going on #3 – What they shouldn’t teach you at Harvard…
Yesterday, I was informed by a colleague from my previous company that a complimentary copy of Harvard Business Review had arrived for me. I said, that’s ok, I didn’t order it, it’s just a sales attempt, you can throw it away. I had no time to go there just to collect a magazine that has mainly very tedious content.
While throwing it away, though, she noticed what was on the reverse side, and called me back.
“There’s also a certificate with your name on it showing that you have been awarded some qualification”.
I thought, “that can’t be, but maybe she means that I received something from someone else in the same pack” and so I made my way over to the old firm from where I was, in a taxi at some expense as I was short on time, only to discover that the back page of these special selling editions of the Harvard Business Review contain phoney certificates looking like you have been awarded something until you see the word “specimen” in feint print diagonally across it. In other words, using false pretenses, they cause me damages to my wallet and my time. The rest of the day was out of kilter, and the total value of thei
r unethical attack was at least 100 dollars of damage to me in various ways. And this they probably do to thousands and thousands of other business professionals.
They don’t care, they know it’s not their damage, anything to sell a course that isn’t even an accredited MBA and is highly likely to pay back the time put into it. They know full well that they can get away from it and do it. What a terrible shame to do these things while bearing the illustrious name of Harvard. I’m only glad it’s not my university, although “Cambridge” has more than its fair share of parasites also.
Quite frankly I would like to send them back a certificate calling them certified fraudsters and put the word “specimen” on it in a similar way. The best revenge though is for bloggers to keep writing. For people interested in sharing thoughts freely to keep building, which is what we do here, people on WordPress and other blog portals. We get you to think and show you the world and share ideas. In the case of this place, the biggest free idea is of course the Goldlist Method, but we don’t send out pretend qualifications certifying that you have finished some course with me placing my name and self-styled title in some “Institute” I’ve dreamed up.
You have to raise an eyebrow at the ethics of someone who puts his signature on the bottom of something that certifies that you have received this or that qualification whn you haven’t really, and then backs out using the word “wzor” painted over it feintly. It is the behaviour of the con-artist and phoney. And I am truly sorry to see that the methods of Harvard Business Review are so poor and pathetic. They should not be teaching this at Harvard.
Please state in the comments if you think, given the way I was inconenienced by this and no doubt others also, if HBR are using ethical or unethical sales techniques here and what it says about what they have to teach us in their courses.
My Brexit Solution
Here’s a thought. The EU moghuls want the UK to pay a €60b Brexit bill. That would be about €2000 per working UK citizen. Some people don’t want to pay that and want a hard Brexit, some are happy for us to pay and hopefully enjoy the benefits of market freedoms in the future.
Why does this have to be a one size fits all approach? Would it not be better (I know this is an alien concept to the EU and politicians/lawmakers in general, but…) to democratise it? Let those British people who want to have a permanent set of personal rights in the EU as they do now pay for an additional ID card like a superpassport (could be the prototype of a real EU passport) at €2000 per head or €5000 for a couple and their dependent children, with subsequent top up payments of say a quarter of the entry sum annually (collected say every four years) and the same for EU nationals wishing to work in the UK. Likewise companies wishing to import or export goods and services under the four freedoms would pay based on their employee numbers not having the card. If all their employees including subbies had the card then the company could trade up to a certain volume per head of employee based on what appears normal in databases like Amadeus. If they wanted to import unusual amounts for the size of the workforce in their sector then even if all their workforce are paid up Europeans they could make top-up payments for higher export and again that would work in both directions.
Then people, and private companies, can actually decide to be European or not. Their contributions would among other things fund their own representation as a constituency of UK Europeans in the European Government at all levels and they would also vote for their representatives. EU nation states citizens wishing to do border and tariff-free trade in the UK and buying the card in that direction could also vote for their own MP in the UK parliament, their own representation even in the House of Lords and representation at other levels of government as relevant to them. If living in the UK, they would remain entitled to vote in local elections.
In other words, the EU as far as the UK is concerned and vice versa would be an individual driven, opt-in system with complete respect for the individual and whether they identify as European or not.
If it works then it could after some years become a blueprint for further EU expansion or for those nations in the EU today potentially, for all we know as most are afraid to have a referendum, against the will of the majority of their people.
Ode to a Lazy Subordinate
(I don’t really mean this, it’s just a humorous poem, which I wrote ten years ago, and just came across it going through old papers…)
If you were a daphnia,
A hydra or a snail,
You’d be more scared of a clown loach
Than of a killer whale.Small things bother the little ones
Great things bother the great
So don’t come at me with your issues
Trying to upwardly delegate.
